


A Short List of Things that Are the Worst, According to Moloch von Zinzer

by grainjew



Category: Girl Genius (Webcomic)
Genre: Denial aint just a river in Egypt, Gen, Loyalty, Mechanicsburg (Girl Genius), Minioning, Post-Canon, but moloch is swimming towards the bottom at a prodigious rate anyways
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:28:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24032785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grainjew/pseuds/grainjew
Summary: In a prospering and un-time-stopped Mechanicsburg, Moloch still isn’t a minion. (But it’s a close thing sometimes.)
Relationships: Agatha Heterodyne & Moloch von Zinzer
Comments: 49
Kudos: 133





	A Short List of Things that Are the Worst, According to Moloch von Zinzer

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aurochsent](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aurochsent/gifts).



> i got talked into reading this comic with promises of loyalty content so it’s only fair i pay that back. it’s roundabout reluctant loyalty content, because, well, moloch. but it’s loyalty content!
> 
> dedicated formally to aurochsent because it’s their dm i took over for three days solid to liveblog in, but this is really for the entire gg contingent in my one piece server. i love you all very much and i hope you’re all happy with the fruits of your relentlessness haha

Moloch hated everything about this.

Mechanicsburg was flourishing, a Heterodyne reigned from the castle, and Moloch _wasn’t_ as far away from the town as he could get while still speaking his native tongue. Worse than that, he was in fact walking _towards_ Castle Heterodyne. He was _entering_ Castle Heterodyne with a report for the Lady of Mechanicsburg, and he was even pretty sure the Castle wouldn’t try to kill him while he was in there.

 _Fwip!_

Moloch ducked a flying knife without breaking stride. The _pretty sure_ and _not kill_ in that sentence were doing a lot of semantic work, of course. The Castle thought a chief minion ought to be kept sharp with the occasional murder attempt, whether or not they had agreed to the job. It was horrible. He was getting used to it, which was worse.

Arriving, he knocked on the door of Agatha Heterodyne’s favorite lab because he damn well had common sense. Bursting in on her deep in the madness place wasn’t always dangerous in the conventional sense, but even if it didn’t end with her threatening his life or strapping him to some contraption to use as a test subject, it always left him thoroughly humiliated when he came to afterwards and realized he’d been handing her tools and acting like the perfect little minion he was _not._ Honestly. His _life._

“Come in!” she said, and Moloch judged her tone even enough that if she _was_ sparking, he could douse her out of it before she caught him up in her spell. Safe to enter, then.

Agatha Heterodyne was removing herself from under some rusted clank she must have found deep in a basement somewhere, hair all mussed and clothing torn. Her eyes were bright, but not Spark-bright. Sometimes Moloch forgot that she was just as skilled a normal mechanic as she was at being a reality-defying tyrannical Spark. Reluctantly, his hand stopped twitching for the bucket of water he’d stashed behind the door.

“So?” she said, once she’d mostly extricated herself.

Right. “The Band found some old spark-work we thought you might want a look at. Also, we finished up repairs in the Hospital District and von Mekkhan wants us to start on the Field of Weights, but he said to run it by you first.”

“He knows what he’s talking about,” she said, absently, still staring at her project. Moloch vaguely envied Vanamonde von Mekkhan. Now _there_ was a minion who didn’t even bother trying to deny it, and somehow still managed to keep his dignity. Not that Moloch was a minion. She pursed her lips. “Toss me that rag?”

Moloch had heard the theories, about how an inborn tendency towards minioning was probably the result of natural selection via centuries of megalomaniacal Sparks. Of course he’d heard the theories. He _hated_ the theories. 

They explained the seething mass of devoted crazy that was Mechanicsburg, sure. Centuries of getting chopped up alive or swapped into the body of a frog if you didn’t say _yes Master_ , hand over whatever the reigning Heterodyne wanted, and get out of the way, and sometimes even if you did — that’d do things to a town. ‘Course, why they hadn’t all left the first time someone got divested of their skin was beyond him. 

He just hated the implication that the theories also explained _him._

Like Hell was he a natural minion. He’d been raised a farmer, in a village that got fought over, sure, but not one that’d ever been conquered into some Spark’s personal fortress. 

It was the kind of place that burned Sparks. The kind of place that _had_ burned Sparks. Moloch’s mother had kept him inside that day with his younger brothers, so all he remembered was the screaming. But Omar and the rest of his older brothers had all gone out to watch, and they’d told him later that the Spark’s girlfriend, Katarina the butcher’s daughter from the next village over, had followed him into the flames. Moloch wasn’t a minion.

He tossed Agatha Heterodyne the rag.

“Hmm,” she said, catching it. She stared at her clank project. “What do you think, fix the weapons system or the leg movement first?”

“Legs,” said Moloch. Damn, there went inching out of here while she was distracted. “Can hardly shoot anything if it can’t move.”

“Always with the practicality,” said Agatha Heterodyne, but there was a smile in her voice that in Moloch’s opinion was even more dangerous than sparky malice. That smile could take you in, and soon enough you’d be like the Jägers, more in love with the Heterodyne than with your lover or your mother.

God’s left toenail, why hadn’t he run the moment that collar was off his neck? 

This Hell-castle was a thing out of cautionary tales, and the family who’d built it creatures out of nightmares. Sure, there’d been the Heterodyne Boys, but people talked around the chief minion (even if he’d never agreed to the job) like he was a Mechanicsburg native, and everyone seemed to agree that Bill and Barry hadn’t liked their hometown much at all. There was an old kind of hurt there, quiet and resigned and a little less urgent every day their Heterodyne didn’t leave. This was a town that _wanted_ a tyrant in charge, that _wanted_ the risk of being torn apart if it meant they could get pulled under by their tyrant’s Spark-spell, that _wanted_ to say _yes Mistress_ and mean it. Worst of all, sometimes Moloch even felt like he could understand them.

And here was Agatha Heterodyne, who was… well, surprisingly unlikely to vivisect someone if she didn’t think she could put them back together after? Moloch wasn’t as easily impressed as the people of Mechanicsburg. He’d seen her smiling all sharp and smug and imperious in the grip of her Spark, and he’d rather not be vivisected at all.

“Keeps a person alive, practicality,” he said. “Anything else you needed, or can I…” He gestured at the door with his head, cursing himself. You didn’t just _ask_ if she needed something. That was minion behavior. He was not a minion.

She turned around and said, “Actually, yes.” 

Oh, come on.

“It’s come to my attention that your Roving Band of Heroic Repairmen isn’t considered an official organization in the city records,” she said, brushing a lock of hair behind her ear and smearing her face with oil in the process. "That won't do at all, of course.”

“Of course,” said Moloch automatically. His finely-honed Run Away Now instincts battered against the back of his head, but Agatha Heterodyne kept talking.

“You’ve all been doing such good work for Mechanicsburg; it would be a shame to let that go unrewarded.” She paused. “Or unfunded. Especially unfunded, when there’s so much left to do.”

“Yes—” he bit his tongue before he could say Lady, or, worse, Mistress. Too much spending time around minions. Too much spending time around minions. Too much spending time around minions. He _had_ to get away from this place. “Paying us. Sounds like a good idea.”

“You’re already being paid,” she said, and frowned at him. “This would just set up a proper fund for the Band’s expenses, make it more permanent and streamlined.” She paused. “You _are_ getting paid, right?”

“Yes, yes,” he reassured, because she looked genuinely worried, and then cursed himself because _that was how she got you._ Still, von Mekkhan deserved better than to have Agatha Heterodyne after him for forgetting to pay the Band’s wages. And— he’d just admitted aloud that she employed him, hadn’t he. Dammit. “We’re getting paid. Which doesn’t make me your minion. I’m just here to finish the job I started, then I’m out of here! You know that.”

That made her smile, for some reason. It made her smile and lit her eyes and Moloch could see the madness place from fifty miles away these days. He hated that too. He wanted to be far, far away from Sparks, not so consistently close to them he could sense an oncoming fugue like a sailor sensing a stormfront. His hands twitched for that bucket of water. 

She was just humming, though, and calculating some arcane formulae in her mind, lightning-quick. Nervous as it made him, she hadn’t actually done anything that would justify dousing her. Yet. He was wary of the humming on principle, had been ever since he’d heard townspeople going on about heterodyning and then realized Agatha Heterodyne really wasn’t ever _not_ humming, but it couldn’t actually hurt him on its own. Just when paired with sharp tools and a sharper mind.

“Of course,” she said, still smiling in that smug madgirl way. “Still, you’re doing such a fine job.” 

Moloch smacked down the part of him that wanted to bask in the praise, and then for good measure belatedly attributed it to pride in his craftsmanship.

Her smile was like a knife. “You’ll stay ‘till the town’s in good repair, yes?”

“Gotta see the job done, don’t I?” he said. “I’ve got that much pride in my work at least. And you Sparks’ll have this place down around our— _the people’s_ ears if someone with common sense isn’t there to keep an eye on things.”

“Glad to hear you care,” she said, genuine despite the Spark burning in her, and oh, dammit, _damn it all,_ he _did_ care, didn’t he? 

He cared. About Mechanicsburg. About this town full of minions who wanted nothing more than to see their Spark all alit in fire and lightning. He actually _cared_ about this place.

“Only about the work I’ve done,” he lied.

He had to get out of here.

Agatha Heterodyne smiled again, and this time it was hardly even sharp. She almost looked like a person, like this, and that was the worst of it. That was the worst of it, when the Spark of her outlined a woman who cared like anyone else, who was just as fervently in love with her town of horrors as it was with her, who considered Moloch to belong to House Heterodyne as much as the Jägers did and as much as von Mekkhan did and as much as her inevitable heirs did, despite… everything.

She made it so hard to fear her, like that. She made it so hard to do anything but try to make every one of her dreams come true.

“Well, then, the town of Mechanicsburg thanks you for that work.” She held up the rag he’d tossed her earlier and turned back to her clank project. “Life would be ever so much harder around here without you.”

 _I'm still not a minion,_ he didn't say, as he walked back out the door in a daze, trying to forget everything that had just happened. It didn’t work. _But if I were to be, just hypothetically mind you, I'd be one of yours..._

_Mistress._

She turned around and winked smugly, like she knew exactly what he was thinking. He mercilessly squashed an urge to trail behind her like a loyal puppy. In the distance, the Castle laughed.

Everything was the _worst._

**Author's Note:**

> please just imagine me flailing quietly with my face stuck in a pillow about how much i love mechanicsburg. that's the ENTIRE zeph reads gg experience


End file.
